Reloaded Rhetoric

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By Brian Linder

The Matrix onslaught continues! If you're still recovering from theuber-cool teasertrailer (Warner Bros. reports that the trailer was downloaded over 2 milliontimes in its first 72 hours online) and the firstproduction stills that emerged last week, then this latest bit of news mightjust cause you to short-circuit.

Keanu Reeves and the films' producer Joel Silver talked candidly to SCIFI Wire in recent interview. Keanu describes the development of Neosaying, "The brothers [Wachowski] have put up some great obstacles to test[Neo's new] powers, and the story kind of goes outside of the Matrix and starts to concern itself with the machines inZion. So it¿s almost [like] what he can do in the Matrix is not enough.... It's the development of the hero journey for my character, which is new challenges and choices. And it¿s not so much about being born. He wanted to find out where he was. Now he knows. Or he thinks heknows."

Joel Silver is talking big about the films' special effects...really big! Andif he's right, these flicks will be unfathomably cool! Joel says, "When we made the first movie...the[Wachowskis] had very strict ideas about a specific visual effect that they wanted toexplore... we called it bullet time... immediately when the movie opened, we saw repetitions of that. ...For a while, I bet they thought it was flattering. But after a while, they kind of got angry about it. So they decided that, in these two movies, they would create visual effects that could never be copied. So we have done visual effects for the movie that, because of the time that we took to make them and the cost, will never be seen again. So I really think that the bar has been raised so high that, you know, there is no bar. This will end the way movies have been made up to now, because they can go no further."

Silver also told the UK's The Sun(head over there for a couple of new pics from the film), "I don't thinkthere's any way that fans are going to leave the theaterdisappointed." I don't know about you, but I'mstoked!

And finally, check out Overclockersfor some new surveillance photos from a recent location shoot in Sydney, Australia.Stay tuned to IGN FilmForce for the latest on the Matrix sequels.